Who was it that pushed politicians to vote against the ERA?
I sure didn’t push any politicians to vote down the ERA.
IIRC you can look to Phyllis Schlaffley and her brand of women Conservatives as being at least a part of that misogynist group that fought the ERA.
If the ERA were coming up in my generation I’d be in the streets protesting for it.
Why don’t we just resurrect the ERA?
Because it’s more or less redundant. The courts have been interpreting the 14th Amendment to apply to women, and Mr Justice Scalia’s opinions notwithstanding that isn’t likely to change. It would raise the bar for sex discrimination from “indermediate scrutiny” to “strict scrutiny”, but who knows what that would mean in practice? Yeah, men-only SS registration would end, but what else would it do? And this time around we won’t be hearing about how ERA will lead to unisex lockerrooms or women being drafted; we’ll be hearing about how ERA will “destroy the institution of marriage” by opening it up to gays and lesbians. :rolleyes:
We already have a Constitutional amendment banning conscription. If we passed another one, I imagine that folks would just ignore that one, too. It’s not like the language of the Fourteenth Amendment is all that difficult to understand.
I’ll see your bet on gays and lesbians and raise you a buck or two on polygamists.
It has been challenged on the 13th Amendment IIRC and the challenge was dashed by the SCOTUS.
Right, my mistake, I meant 13th, not 14th. But even when the Supreme Court rejected the argument, they didn’t really give any reason why it doesn’t apply. It’s service, it’s involuntary, what part of that is so hard to understand?
Two words: activist judges. Legal fiction, isn’t it wonderful!
I don’t think military service or conscription is servitude. Soldiers are not chattel, nor are they prisoners, even if they have been drafted. I think the common definition of servitude does not encompass military service.
If you have citations from reputable sources on a meaning of servitude that includes military service, please do share.
A selective service system is bureaucratically simple and more palatable to the citizenry. Otherwise, during a national call to a threat to our country we’ll have deuce and a halfs patrolling the streets in search of young men. Upon spotting one (or several), there will be a demand for identification (“Papers, please!”) and anyone between 18 and 26 will be grabbed and whisked away to the nearest processing center.
Servitude and chattel are not synonyms. Soldiers aren’t prisoners, as long as the don’t refuse to continue being soldiers (assuming they are drafted). Then they are prisoners.
I’m with **Chronos **on this. It’s a polite fiction we maintain that drafting people for military service is not involuntary servitude. Do that for any occupation other than the military, and it would violate the constitution. We just figure that the ends justifies the means.
Having said that, the men’s right angle is idiotic. In this day and age, we would certainly see women being drafted in the US if we were to re-institute the draft.
Taxpayers are taxpayers until they stop paying taxes, at which point they become prisoners. That doesn’t make paying taxes “involuntary servitude.” Servitude has a definition, and it doesn’t seem to include military service or paying taxes.
I don’t see how that makes any sense at all. By that argument, you could just as easily say roofers are not chattel or prisoners, and roofing is not servitude so it’s just fine to grab men off the street and force them to re-roof the capital building.
Conscription forces men to involuntarily serve in the military. I don’t see how any rational person could come to the conclusion that’s somehow not involuntary servitude - it’s pretty much the exact definition of it. You’re serving… and it’s not voluntary.
As for not being prisoners… you’re telling me a draftee could just pack up and head home any time he wanted? What do you think would happen if he tried?
Edit: as for taxes, I can switch jobs any time I want. I can also quit my job and sell my house and thus stop paying taxes. There’s a big difference.
If it makes you feel better, I don’t think anyone believes women were spared from the draft because anyone felt they were too important, inherently, or superior in any way. Women make more soldiers. And, at the time, were considered the only natural caregivers who, if forced into combat, would probably cry on all the maps and lead the enemy to base camp by a trail of menstrual blood. Unless there was a steno pool on site.
Slight Hijack but related to women and Selective Service:
Did the United States not draft women in WW2? In the UK after 1941 all women were required to register and many were called up. Theoretically not to fight but some certainly served in units such as anti-aircraft batteries.
No. There were volunteers, but don’t forget there was essentially no threat to the mainland U.S. Millions of women took the jobs that had been vacated by men.
At one point during WWII there was a sever shortage of nurses and there was some talk of drafting women to that role. However, there was a call for more women nurses and a large surge in volunteers so they never had to draft them.
-XT
Thanks for the replies. Interested as my Mum was called up into the Land Army (replacing agricultural workers who had been called up) but somehow managed to transfer into the Women’s Royal Naval Service (the “Wrens”) which was much more to her liking - I never did understand how she managed it!
Come on, the OP getting bent out of shape over something that hasn’t been used in donkey’s years and isn’t likely to be used any time in the near future is a tad ridiculous, but so it this rationale. We’re really organising modern society based on how things have always been done? In which case, when do women get back in the kitchen? Just as men have always been classed as expendable, women have also been classed as primary care givers. So, shouldn’t they be stuck at home looking after the family and kids, rather than working?
I’ve looked up the definition of servitude in a dozen different dictionaries, and the definition uniformly comes back as slavery or bondage, to be held under subjugation, or penal sanctions. I cannot find a definition that encompasses compulsory military or civilian service. Look it up if you don’t believe me.
I’ll tell you what: if you can find evidence that Congress, in passing the 13th Amendment, intended to outlaw conscription, jury duty, posse comitatus/hue and cry, compulsory school attendance, or similar types of government mandates on individual action, I will concede the point.
But I do not believe that military service fits the definition of servitude. It’s perfectly clear what servitude is, if you look at a dictionary. That definition does not encompass any of the forms of compulsory service I mentioned above (conscription, jury duty, school attendance, etc).
So, in conclusion, bring cites if you want to continue this argument that conscription is involuntary servitude. The definitions of servitude used so far in this thread do not meet the common definition found in pretty much every dictionary I’ve looked in.
Perhaps proponents of this view should be lobbying Webster to change his position on the matter before urging me to change mine. 